Artificial Limb Grown In Lab By Scientists

With the help of functioning muscles and veins, researchers at Massachusetts General Center for Regenerative Medicine have grown a rat limb. The findings are published this week in the journal Biomaterials.

"The composite nature of our limbs makes building a functional biological replacement particularly challenging. Limbs contain muscles, bone, cartilage, blood vessels, tendons, ligaments and nerves -- each of which has to be rebuilt and requires a specific supporting structure called the matrix," said Harald Ott, MD, of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative Medicine, senior author of the paper, via CNET. "We have shown that we can maintain the matrix of all of these tissues in their natural relationships to each other, that we can culture the entire construct over prolonged periods of time, and that we can repopulate the vascular system and musculature."

By using a technique in use for lab-grown organs and stripping the cells to create a neutral matrix, researchers were able to form an entire limb; unlike the creation of muscles and veins, alone, this involves a more complex combination of many types of tissues.

The scientists created the artificial limb through a decellularization process that strips living cellular material from forelimbs of dead rats so the vasculature and nerve matrix remains in tact. Then, they removed the cellular debris, creating a cell-free matrix, according to Forbes.

The limb was suspended for five days in nutrient based culture. Then after 14 days, scientists removed it from the bioreactor that showed the total formation of cells on the blood vessel walls connected by fibers.

"In clinical limb transplantation, nerves do grow back into the graft, enabling both motion and sensation, and we have learned that this process is largely guided by the nerve matrix within the graft," Dr. Ott said. "We hope in future work to show that the same will apply to bio-artificial grafts. Additional next steps will be replicating our success in muscle regeneration with human cells and expanding that to other tissue types, such as bone, cartilage and connective tissue."

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